Franco-Indian collaboration in Indian Ocean Region: How India-France partnership has taken centre stage in the IOR

During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to France, France and India spelt out their commitments to the Indo-Pacific region. In a first, the two democracies published a roadmap for their bilateral and regional cooperation. The roadmap outlines the alignment between the two countries’ vision for the region, with cooperation extending across the domains of defence, security, economics, connectivity, infrastructure, sustainability, and human-centric development. As Sino-US competition intensifies, countries around the world are susceptible to major power contestation and influence. At the same time, key middle powers seek to pursue their interests by working together. With the centrality of the Indo-Pacific in world affairs, the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is emerging increasingly important. As both India and France outline their bilateral cooperation agenda for the next 25 years, what can they collectively do more in the IOR? And with whom can they collectively do more? Clearly, this would encompass regional challenges and interests of both India and France. Its territorial possessions and significant security and economic interests in the region have made France a vital player. India’s role as a net security provider to its oceanic neighborhood – with a focus on its sustainable growth and prosperity, as encapsulated in the Security and Growth for All in the Region (SAGAR) – presents it with enormous stakes in the region. There are three broad ways in which India and France can cooperate in the IOR. First, the IOR lacks a regional security architecture. An institution – or a set of institutions – having the ability to create consensus on what regional security amounts to underpins a successful security architecture. Important actors such as the US, China, and the European Union, each have differing ideas about what an ideal security arrangement in the IOR is. A strong set of institutionalised norms (diplomatic, economic, technological) underpins consensus-building exercises toward any kind of regionalism. Ultimately, a lack of a regional architecture also means a lack of regional economic integration, including a network of trade, infrastructure and investment to emerge. An important institution in the IOR is the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA), the only forum connecting the littoral states of the IOR. The IORA suffers from institutional weakness – as researchers Frédéric Grare and Jean-Loup Samaan mention in their book, ‘Indian Ocean as a New Political and Security Region.’ Its capacity to drive change is limited. And as the authors mention, the IOR’s members’ diversity in geography, culture, and economic levels of development has led to an ineffectual political will. That affects its access to global institutions, where it can participate in conversations concerning the larger Indo-Pacific region. It also disables IORA’s ability to make demands for regional security. In an effort to build regionalism, India and France – along with South Africa, an IORA co-founder – can collectively strengthen institutions like the IORA. They can help bolster its institutional presence by increasing its funding for organisational activities (excluding funding for specific projects aimed towards issues it works towards). The other leg of support can come from strengthening its diplomatic access to key Indo-Pacific partners, stakeholders, and other actors. Second, according to The Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Indian Ocean is warming faster than the global average oceanic warming. One key security concern emerging from this is that island nations – or ‘ocean’ states – face sea-level rise. In the coming years, traditional security in the IOR will be tied to ‘ocean’ security – the capacity to be secure from oceanic disturbances. As resident oceanic powers, India and France should begin by incorporating this intersection between traditional and non-traditional security and climate-centric ocean health into their Indo-Pacific security cooperation agendas. In addition, there is a need for building economic, intellectual, and diplomatic capital that recognizes the island’s centrality as we think about regional development and cooperation. In this context, while the 2022 roadmap already centers on ocean governance and the blue economy, working at the intersection of security, climate-induced oceanic change, and island development is key for the IOR. For example, the two countries can lead joint studies of IOR warming and its impact on island development and governance. As researcher Darshana Baruah notes in a 2018 article, India and France could lead the building of “smarter islands” by first beginning to understand the sustainable island development of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and La Réunion, respectively. This capital will serve as a cooperative public good in the Pacific, an area that both countries would like to extend their cooperation in the next 25 years. Third, the roadmap outlines India’s and France’s intention to collaborate in the South West maritime region. Here it finds greater potential for interoperability with Australia, another resident Indian Ocean state, that is vying for increased influence in the western region. India has logistics-sharing agreements with both France and Australia. Given the Indian Ocean’s vast expanse–and only emerging maritime surveillance infrastructure–the trilateral could work towards democratizing these capabilities by endowing Small Island Developing States (SIDS) with necessary technological capabilities. Islands and ports of middle powers in the IOR are dominantly considered sites of military basing, but more important, they provide excellent logistical access for developing maritime surveillance networks. Greater access to each other’s strategic posts – Australia’s Cooks’ Island, France’s La Réunion, and India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands – along with cross-cutting logistical partnerships with, among others, Oman (Duqm), Djibouti, Maldives, Seychelles (Assumption Island), and Iran (Chahabar), can provide a structure for greater logistical access that underpins regional maritime surveillance efforts. These efforts can be bolstered by enhancing current structures for information-sharing across the IOR, by expanding and financially supporting Indian Ocean Commission-led Regional Coordination Operations Centres (RCOS), Regional Maritime Information Fusion Centres (RMIFC), and national centers (which can be increased in number, by greater access to the Bay of Bengal states). Fourth, India-France bilateral cooperation already intends to build India’s industrial capabilities to co-produce advanced defense technologies,  “also for the benefit of third [world] countries.” Here’s what could come out of an India-French industrial partnership: for the sake of self-reliance, providing defense-related maritime reconnaissance resources to SIDS. This could enable thinking about the security of developing–and oceanic–states differently in the midst of major power competition. A collective partnership between India and France in the IOR is aligned with their interests in the Indo-Pacific region. In the next 25 years, the two countries can enable a new era of development in the IOR through a sustainable and holistic development agenda centred on respecting middle powers as agents in their own right in our polarised times. The author is a research analyst in the Indo-Pacific Studies Programme at the Takshashila Institution. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.